Author: Curt Doolittle

  • “A smile is almost never the wrong thing to say.”

    —“A smile is almost never the wrong thing to say.”—


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 07:09:00 UTC

  • ERROR OF ANGLO UNIVERSALISM – CONVERSATION WITH NICHOLAS CARDACI ON EVOLUTIONARY

    https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/how-ethnocentrics-rule/THE ERROR OF ANGLO UNIVERSALISM – CONVERSATION WITH NICHOLAS CARDACI ON EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIES

    NICK

    Were you aware of this series of experiments that were carried out on evolutionary strategies competing with one another? I found them very useful:

    https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/how-ethnocentrics-rule/

    CURT

    Yes. Axelrod and followers have been working on this model for many years. I include him in my reading list.

    This particular set of studies is interesting in that it addresses the value of ethnocentrism.

    While economic utility CAN be expressed as reproduction, it is not always the case as Sweden shows today.

    But I should probably comment on the study so that I draw the connection with propertarianism.

    NICK

    Were you surprised that the mechanism of ethnocentric ascension was straight up robbery of humanitarians, rather than limitation of free riding?

    I think there’s definitely both going on, but the weakness of the mediation (?) hypothesis surprised me.

    CURT

    No, it’s obvious. One of the values of modeling that Axelrod (and other life-models) brought to the debate (with the aid of computer science) was equilibrial modeling rather than linear projection.

    It’s great stuff. I think I read him first … I dunno. It seems like the 80’s or maybe early 90’s. My wife and I were travelling in the UK at the time and I read it in the wee hours of the morning.

    It was one of the most influential pieces that I read.

    Actually, maybe i’ll write a post about the relationship between axelrod in cooperation and mandelbrot in stock markets, and taleb in risk, and equilibrium in prices. These behaviors are all the same: before we had data and computers we could not conduct these measurements and we could not see them.

    This means that unless one can describe an idea as a supply and demand curve, that one is engaging in idealism.

    NICK

    I’ve been pondering this topic recently, mulling over the conflict between the moral universalism and ethnocentrism.

    One thing that’s readily obvious to me, especially being around alot of southern europeans, is that this ethnocentrism though isn’t always great. As it seems to me that it’s always accompanied with high family nepotism. Italy, is extremely regionalist and nepotistic within the family, and seriously limits how big their commons can be I think. The country is way too big as it is, with that level of heterogeneity.

    Some of it seems to be the greater levels of inbreeding that’s gone on historically.

    The bolded text in this post by hbd chick pretty much nails the kinship/family nepotism that goes on down there.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Reaction/comments/3gckby/the_reality_of_deep_southern_euro_inbreeding_is/

    Even in the anglo countries, I still see it going on, with italians from the same region letting eachother off parking fines

    It makes them more impervious to outside infiltration, but they can never reach the same commons as their northern neighbors.

    CURT

    Nepotism (family corporialism) is not the same as corruption or deceit. if one biases opportunities toward the family in maters not in the commons then that is not an imposition of costs upon others.

    If one exercises corruption in the production of commons, then that is another thing altogether.

    So you’d distinguish those then?

    CURT

    Yes. Favoring market opportunity is different from imposing costs upon the commons.

    Even the innocent nepotism, seems to be harmful to an extent. Like you mentioned on the Shoah, it limits a society’s ability to put the best person in the job.

    There was a good article recently outlining how in Romance Europe, family owned corporations are far more dominant than in the Anglo markets, where there’s ‘market-based management’, meritocracy essentially.

    So just as anglo model works under great opportunity (and as the model shows) the family model (and aristocracy which is also a family model) defeats the anglo over time.

    that’s what Axelrod’s model shows.

    NICK

    This is true. As they cooperate with people defecting against them. Yes. It seems to me to be both a gift and a curse. That’s cliched, but its the only way I can think do describe attitudes in southern europe.

    CURT

    It’s just that no principle of measurement is infinitely extensible. A rule acts as a means of measurement (decidability). There are not infinitely true rules. There are limits to every rule. (Which is a very complex bit of philosophy, but the reason why apriorism can’t be true.)

    The tactics you use in one circumstance and those in another are different. It is probably short term better to use universal ethics until your competitors catch up, and then return to familial ethics in order to prevent defectors from becoming parasites.

    (this is a very good discussion we should probably post for others to follow)

    NICK

    Yes. That’s what it seems to me. Southern europeans are capped in what they can do, but what they have is far more robust and secure than what the anglos and co have achieved.

    Should we post it on the Subreddit?

    CURT

    Yes. It’s a pretty good conversation that we can probably use to educate others. We are touching on a set of very big ideas here that are not obvious: the limits to any evolutaionary strategy, the advantage of familialism over universalism in the long term, the conceptual problem of training people to models and demand curves instead of ideal types and linear progressions.

    What we are saying is that we must increase the complexity of the basis of moral argument.

    NICK

    Yes, we cant simply pretend to have moral arguments among ourselves (as europeans) in isolation any longer. It’s eating away at us.

    I went through my finance textbook and found the study about family ownership I mentioned.

    Faccio & Lang, “The Ultimate Ownership of Western European Corporations” (1997)

    A bit older than I thought

    Also, there’s a study indicating their outperformance over more anglo style firms, strangely enough.

    Anderson & Reeb, “Founding Family Ownership and Firm Performance from the S&P500” (2003)

    Going to head off.

    CURT

    Cheers


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 07:02:00 UTC

  • REFRAMING THE DEBATE Conversation on positioning with Don Finn the other night.

    REFRAMING THE DEBATE

    Conversation on positioning with Don Finn the other night. This is how I came away with a minor tweak to the positioning.

    Cosmopolitan Ashkenazi, Low Trust, Un-landed, Authoritarian, Anarcho Capitalism

    vs

    Aristocratic, Anglo, High Trust, Landed, Legal, Anarcho Capitalism

    vs

    Martial, Germanic, High Trust, Landed, Hierarchical, Tribal/Familial Capitalism.

    As far as I can tell the germans were right prior to the conquest of the german civilization by it’s heretical offshoot the anglo civilization.

    The anglo method of law is correct but the strategy is incorrect. The german social order strategy is correct, but the justificationary kantian method is incorrect. The Ashkenazi social strategy is incorrect AND the pseudoscientific method is incorrect.

    Everyone got the enlightenment at least half wrong.


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 06:31:00 UTC

  • LYING IS OBVIOUS. I can’t read a lot of subtle emotions in facial expressions. B

    LYING IS OBVIOUS.

    I can’t read a lot of subtle emotions in facial expressions. But by contrast, I can read lying at a glance. The only people who can fool me are those who overload me with distractions (I know a few women who can do that.)

    Two ‘investors’ this morning. Coffee. One american, one german. Their body language was “i am prepared to lie”. Then the american lied first. They also signaled two things that people with money don’t: they’re too old to be doing discovery that’s an analysts job, and they’re not healthy looking from either alcohol, smoking, or stress – none of which say they are in control of their lives.

    Signals matter.

    ( It also explains to me some of the subconscious stress I have in Ukraine. )


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 06:15:00 UTC

  • Cardaci sent this update on Axelrod’s work on the competitive value of ethnocent

    https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/how-ethnocentrics-rule/Nicholas Cardaci sent this update on Axelrod’s work on the competitive value of ethnocentrism, and how entho-centrism always wins. I had assumed this was fairly obvious, but while axelrod also focuses on cooperation, I want to convert this into propertarian language and therefore make it more compatible with ethics and political economy. So over the next few months I’ll try to write a few posts that make use of this argument.

    (Thanks Nick)


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 04:46:00 UTC

  • ANARCHO CAPITALISM VS COSMOPOLITAN ANARCHO CAPITALISM (from elsewhere) Both Aris

    http://www.propertarianism.com/n4qL7ARISTOCRATIC ANARCHO CAPITALISM VS COSMOPOLITAN ANARCHO CAPITALISM

    (from elsewhere)

    Both Aristocratic (British, Critical, and Legal), and Cosmopolitan (Ashkenazi, Justificationary, and Moral) Anarchism, advance the open market. They are opposite methods of expressing the same argument:scientific prohibition and justificationary advocacy.

    Both evolved as ethno-centric evolutionary strategies: agrarian islanders evolving into seafaring traders, and diasporic pastoralists into diasporic traders. Both groups, in the Enlightenment, (the Anglo first, French second, Germans third, and Cosmopolitans last) attempted to universalize and evangelize their group evolutionary strategy as a universal ethic – just as groups attempt to universalize their myth and religion. Given freedom from the church and landed aristocracy, the middle class sought to justify their ascent into political power by expanding their middle class ethics as a universal, just as the nobility had justified its ethics as a universal.

    But aside from differences in method of argument, Aristocratic and Cosmopolitan ethics vary considerably in the causality their arguments depend upon, and in the scope of their ethical prohibitions, and in their means of enforcement of those prohibitions. As well as their unstated assertion of the behavioral nature of, and rational interests of, man. Upon the outcome of models. And lastly upon the empirical evidence.

    Causality and Scope

    Aristocratic ethics depend upon the causal property of non-retaliation – prohibiting conflict that destroys capital and impedes cooperation – in order to preserve the disproportionate returns on cooperation. In aristocratic ethics, only productive, fully informed, and warrantied voluntary exchange, free of externality by the same criteria is ethical.

    Cosmopolitan ethics depend upon the presumption of the sufficiency of satisfaction, and justify non-retaliation with the excuse of volition, thereby justifying outwitting or fooling or taking advantage of the asymmetry of knowledge of the parties. While outright ‘fraud’ misrepresentation is available contractually, it is not mandated by the ethics.

    In Aristocratic ethics, the person who fails to fully inform is the party at fault – increasing trust, economic velocity, and capital. In Cosmopolitan, Desert and Steppe ethics, the person who errs is the party at fault – thereby decreasing trust, economic velocity and capital.

    In Aristocratic ethics exchanges must be productive. In Cosmopolitan ethics they need not be. Aristocracy prohibits blackmail which undermines cooperation and Cosmopolitan ethics justify blackmail as voluntary. Again, aristocracy seeks to preserve cooperation, trust, economic velocity, and Cosmopolitanism seeks to preserve profiting regardless of consequences.

    Why? Because in Aristocratic society, the army consists of a universal militia and a heavily armored and equipped professional warrior class. Aristocracy preserves the high trust ethic of warriors across all classes, as a means of preserving cohesion in defense of the territory and commons. For diasporic raiders and traders who engage in various levels of parasitism, they need not defend a commons, nor refrain from parasitism on hosts or opponent’s commons, nor preserve cooperation with hosts, because there are other hosts to move to, and no value in constructing fixed capital or commons, and no value in preserving the reciprocal insurance of the militia in defense of land and capital. Land holding is terribly expensive. Land holding and truth telling are terribly expensive. But they eliminate the need for a central state. If a group demonstrates in-group bias, parasitically consumes a host’s commons, does not build its own commons, and does not pay the high normative, material, and personal risks to life and limb to defend territory, then it is much easier to accumulate that wealth internally than it is for hosts who must pay all those costs.

    Enforcement

    Aristocracy enforces high trust ethics by economic ostracization(boycott), productive ostracization(prevention of holding land), restitution, punishment and culling (usually hanging). The west culled .5%-1% of malcontents every year from about 1100 through about 1800 (the industrial revolution absorbed more labor and lowered demand for criminality). Cosmopolitanism instead, enforces ethics by disenfranchising those who cannot pass the tests of adulthood. By economic ostracization (boycotting), by reproductive boycotting (ostracization), or what we call ‘shunning’. And given that groups who demonstrate and advocate low trust and parasitic relations with non members, and that this behavior generates hostility by non-members, ostracization traditionally amounted to a virtual death sentence.

    That illustrates the difference between land holding (punishing) and non-landholding (ostracizing) means of maintaining control.

    Prohibition vs Advocacy

    Aristocratic Pessimistic Prohibition(law) vs Cosmopolitan Optimistic Advocacy(morality).

    So law which prohibits violations of the incentive to cooperate in the production of land-holding, commons, capital formation, and reproduction is very different from the moral advocacy which advocates the concentration of capital and preserves parasitism. This is why Law is the means of constructing a negative philosophy under aristocracy, and why Moral argument is the means of constructing a positive advocacy of preferred behavior (musts) dictated by gods.

    Evolutionary Strategies

    Aristocratic ethics are an evolutionary strategy for land-holding, farmers, craftsmen and warriors mutually dependent upon one another for defense of the land in the absence of a standing army. Cosmopolitan ethics are an evolutionary strategy for a minority of migratory traders (who can move on without paying the cost of retaliation), and who favor exchange and cunning rather than honesty and production. The even less ethically constrained version of cosmopolitan ethics is that of gypsies, that practice theft, charlatanry, prostitution and suppress internal attempts to engage in production and trade instead of the group strategy of parasitism. The even less ethically constrained version is that of desert and steppe raiders (bandits) that engage in pastoralism for subsistence, and raiding for wealth.

    So the question is, how is it POSSIBLE to construct an anarcho-capitalist (stateless) social order without Aristocratic ethics, embodied in rule of law, using a common organic law, under strict construction, under universal standing, and a universal militia?

    It isn’t. That’s why it hasn’t been.

    Truth. Trust. Commons. Law. Science.

    Welcome to Aristocracy.

    The only Anarcho Capitalism Possible.

    The only liberty possible.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)

    PS: See why western libertarians are morally blind:

    Moral Blindness: URL:http://www.propertarianism.com/n4qL7

    Libertarian Moral Blindness: URL:http://www.propertarianism.com/AE9oE


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 04:43:00 UTC

  • ANARCHO CAPITALISM VS COSMOPOLITAN ANARCHO CAPITALISM Both Aristocratic (British

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/04/27/we-are-morally-blind-limited-in-our-perceptions-and-memory-and-severely-in-our-reason-the-last-thing-we-should-do-is-construct-large-risk-prone-intentionally-managed-states/ARISTOCRATIC ANARCHO CAPITALISM VS COSMOPOLITAN ANARCHO CAPITALISM

    Both Aristocratic (British, Critical, and Legal), and Cosmopolitan (Ashkenazi, Justificationary, and Moral) Anarchism, advance the open market. They are opposite methods of expressing the same argument:scientific prohibition and justificationary advocacy.

    Both evolved as ethno-centric evolutionary strategies: agrarian islanders evolving into seafaring traders, and diasporic pastoralists into diasporic traders. Both groups, in the Enlightenment, (the Anglo first, French second, Germans third, and Cosmopolitans last) attempted to universalize and evangelize their group evolutionary strategy as a universal ethic – just as groups attempt to universalize their myth and religion. Given freedom from the church and landed aristocracy, the middle class sought to justify their ascent into political power by expanding their middle class ethics as a universal, just as the nobility had justified its ethics as a universal.

    But aside from differences in method of argument, Aristocratic and Cosmopolitan ethics vary considerably in the causality their arguments depend upon, and in the scope of their ethical prohibitions, and in their means of enforcement of those prohibitions. As well as their unstated assertion of the behavioral nature of, and rational interests of, man. Upon the outcome of models. And lastly upon the empirical evidence.

    Causality and Scope

    Aristocratic ethics depend upon the causal property of non-retaliation – prohibiting conflict that destroys capital and impedes cooperation – in order to preserve the disproportionate returns on cooperation. In aristocratic ethics, only productive, fully informed, and warrantied voluntary exchange, free of externality by the same criteria is ethical.

    Cosmopolitan ethics depend upon the presumption of the sufficiency of satisfaction, and justify non-retaliation with the excuse of volition, thereby justifying outwitting or fooling or taking advantage of the asymmetry of knowledge of the parties. While outright ‘fraud’ misrepresentation is available contractually, it is not mandated by the ethics.

    In Aristocratic ethics, the person who fails to fully inform is the party at fault – increasing trust, economic velocity, and capital. In Cosmopolitan, Desert and Steppe ethics, the person who errs is the party at fault – thereby decreasing trust, economic velocity and capital.

    In Aristocratic ethics exchanges must be productive. In Cosmopolitan ethics they need not be. Aristocracy prohibits blackmail which undermines cooperation and Cosmopolitan ethics justify blackmail as voluntary. Again, aristocracy seeks to preserve cooperation, trust, economic velocity, and Cosmopolitanism seeks to preserve profiting regardless of consequences.

    Why? Because in Aristocratic society, the army consists of a universal militia and a heavily armored and equipped professional warrior class. Aristocracy preserves the high trust ethic of warriors across all classes, as a means of preserving cohesion in defense of the territory and commons. For diasporic raiders and traders who engage in various levels of parasitism, they need not defend a commons, nor refrain from parasitism on hosts or opponent’s commons, nor preserve cooperation with hosts, because there are other hosts to move to, and no value in constructing fixed capital or commons, and no value in preserving the reciprocal insurance of the militia in defense of land and capital. Land holding is terribly expensive. Land holding and truth telling are terribly expensive. But they eliminate the need for a central state. If a group demonstrates in-group bias, parasitically consumes a host’s commons, does not build its own commons, and does not pay the high normative, material, and personal risks to life and limb to defend territory, then it is much easier to accumulate that wealth internally than it is for hosts who must pay all those costs.

    Enforcement

    Aristocracy enforces high trust ethics by economic ostracization(boycott), productive ostracization(prevention of holding land), restitution, punishment and culling (usually hanging). The west culled .5%-1% of malcontents every year from about 1100 through about 1800 (the industrial revolution absorbed more labor and lowered demand for criminality). Cosmopolitanism instead, enforces ethics by disenfranchising those who cannot pass the tests of adulthood. By economic ostracization (boycotting), by reproductive boycotting (ostracization), or what we call ‘shunning’. And given that groups who demonstrate and advocate low trust and parasitic relations with non members, and that this behavior generates hostility by non-members, ostracization traditionally amounted to a virtual death sentence.

    That illustrates the difference between land holding (punishing) and non-landholding (ostracizing) means of maintaining control.

    Prohibition vs Advocacy

    Aristocratic Pessimistic Prohibition(law) vs Cosmopolitan Optimistic Advocacy(morality).

    So law which prohibits violations of the incentive to cooperate in the production of land-holding, commons, capital formation, and reproduction is very different from the moral advocacy which advocates the concentration of capital and preserves parasitism. This is why Law is the means of constructing a negative philosophy under aristocracy, and why Moral argument is the means of constructing a positive advocacy of preferred behavior (musts) dictated by gods.

    Evolutionary Strategies

    Aristocratic ethics are an evolutionary strategy for land-holding, farmers, craftsmen and warriors mutually dependent upon one another for defense of the land in the absence of a standing army. Cosmopolitan ethics are an evolutionary strategy for a minority of migratory traders (who can move on without paying the cost of retaliation), and who favor exchange and cunning rather than honesty and production. The even less ethically constrained version of cosmopolitan ethics is that of gypsies, that practice theft, charlatanry, prostitution and suppress internal attempts to engage in production and trade instead of the group strategy of parasitism. The even less ethically constrained version is that of desert and steppe raiders (bandits) that engage in pastoralism for subsistence, and raiding for wealth.

    So the question is, how is it POSSIBLE to construct an anarcho-capitalist (stateless) social order without Aristocratic ethics, embodied in rule of law, using a common organic law, under strict construction, under universal standing, and a universal militia?

    It isn’t. That’s why it hasn’t been.

    Truth. Trust. Commons. Law. Science.

    Welcome to Aristocracy.

    The only Anarcho Capitalism Possible.

    The only liberty possible.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)

    PS: See why western libertarians are morally blind:

    Moral Blindness: URL:http://www.propertarianism.com/n4qL7

    Libertarian Moral Blindness: URL:http://www.propertarianism.com/AE9oE


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-12 04:42:00 UTC

  • “I have far too many bullets in this gun for you to still be talking.”— lol

    —“I have far too many bullets in this gun for you to still be talking.”— lol


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-11 15:53:00 UTC

  • PROGRAMMING RELIES UPON STRICT CONSTRUCTION And decidability. So do propertarian

    PROGRAMMING RELIES UPON STRICT CONSTRUCTION

    And decidability.

    So do propertarian ethics.

    That is the reason I figured it out.

    And it’s the reason hayek didn’t.

    I think he would have but he started with psychology.

    I started with decidability and strict construction.


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-11 15:22:00 UTC

  • HICKS TRIES TO GIVE FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION TO REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT “—we live

    HICKS TRIES TO GIVE FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION TO REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

    “—we live in something that should be called a Doubly-Indirect Paternalist Democracy or a Thrice-Removed Benevolent Aristocracy. Citizens can makes some choices, but within a framework selected and enforced by our intellectual superiors.”–Stephen Hicks

    SEE: http://www.thesavvystreet.com/can-a-free-society-work-for-the-less-clever/

    I want to write a little about how non-discretionary rule of law which prohibits involuntary transfer “Rule of Law” is the only necessary check on the grant of positive discretion by ‘specialists’.

    There is no difference between government under rule of law and corporation under rule of law, as long as citizens and shareholders have a means of juridical defense against the imposition of unwanted costs, or the choice of policy that harms them.

    We non-specialists (citizens, shareholders) do not need to understand positives(policy), we need only understand that policy is constructed truthfully, productively, with full accounting, and consisting of mutually beneficial transfers.

    While this may sound like legal gobbeldy-gook it is trivial to place such contractarian constraints of strict construction upon the state and it’s bureaucrats.

    Curt


    Source date (UTC): 2015-08-11 15:01:00 UTC